Lisa Rayner is the author of the Sunny Side of Solar Cooking.
Who is Lisa Rayner?
Lisa Rayner has lived in Flagstaff, Arizona since 1987. Lisa has a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Resource Interpretation from Northern Arizona University. She is a graduate of the 1993 Black Mesa Permaculture Project's Design Certification Course and 1994 Coconino County Master Gardener Program.
Lisa is a writer and teacher of sustainable cooking and permaculture workshops in northern Arizona. She is currently working on several cookbooks with bioregional, vegan and renewable energy themes. In Flagstaff, Lisa is known as a progressive political activist who rides her bicycle everywhere and writes frequent letters to the editor for the local daily newspaper. Lisa gardens on two small balconies and is the coordinator for Juniper Street Community Garden.
The daughter of a chemist and a biologist, Lisa Rayner has long had an interest in the natural world. As a young girl she was an avid sea shell collector. The evidence can be found in every room of her house. She spent much of her time exploring the forest around her Delaware home. One exasperated teacher wrote in her second grade report card, "Lisa tends to play with little books, paper, yarn etc. and rushes through assignments." (Today, in addition to writing books, Lisa has a loom but doesn't have much time for weaving.)
Lisa hated cooking growing up. Then, in 1985 she became vegetarian, and soon after, vegan. She spent the next year-and-a-half teaching herself to cook and in the process discovered she enjoyed it. Lisa's reasons for being vegan include animal welfare and factory farms, world hunger and environmental sustainability. In 1993 she was teaching a vegetarian cooking class when she realized that she wanted to learn about which foods grew in her cool, dry mountain home. She began to learn all she could about growing and cooking bioregionally-appropriate foods.
In 1996 Lisa obtained a word processor while dumpster-diving and wrote the first edition of Growing Food in the Southwest Mountains: A Permaculture Approach to Gardening Above 6,500 Feet in Arizona, New Mexico, Southern Colorado and Southern Utah. Also in 1996, Lisa got to know her future husband Dan Frazier at monthly vegetarian EarthSave potlucks. From 2000 to 2002, Lisa and Dan published a small progressive newspaper called Flagstaff Tea Party that advocated for the protection of northern Arizona's environmental riches and the preservation of Flagstaff's small-town charm. During this time, Lisa also ran a community currency program called Flagstaff Neighborly Notes.
Lisa has been a solar cook for 12 years. She started her solar cooking adventures with a used cardboard CooKit panel cooker from Solar Cookers International bought for $10 and later purchased the Global Sun Oven she currently cooks with on her south-facing townhome balcony. Lisa has also baked her own bread with a sourdough culture for about 12 years. In 2006, she began hand-grinding her own whole wheat flour for baking bread. Lisa's newest cooking interest is learning about naturally fermented foods like sauerkraut, kosher dill pickles, miso and tempeh.
Articles in the media
- April 2008: Flagstaff activist goes green by biking, baking in solar oven - Arizona Daily Sun
- Spring 2006: Ecological Collapse, Trauma Theory and Permaculture, by Lisa Rayner - Gatherings, Journal of the International Community for Ecopsychology
Contact
lisa@lisarayner.com
http://www.lisarayner.com
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